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Rented 85kw for 3 days during Super Bowl.. Opting NOT to buy
- Thread starter KDIceBergSlim
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- Model S
spaceballs
Member
You fail to understand that at the start of you day you will have a Full charge, people here will keep telling you this over and over because you don't believe it or don't understand it.
If you can't understand that one simple point then no one can help you.
No you didn't.
You rented and drove the car in question during Superbowl weekend. The temps here in Arizona were not anywhere close to where you would get a message about the battery being cold. I drive right by the stadium twice a day and did so this weekend as well. It was in the 60s-70s during the day, are you kidding? Folks, I think this guy is not telling the truth as he clearly could not have received a cold battery warning in Arizona over Superbowl weekend where it averaged 60s-70s during the day and mid to upper 40s at night.
This guy is clearly a troll. Reference his original post, it follows the typical troll pattern... identify what is wrong with the car using straw man arguments which bear no relationship to reality, then state you would rather buy a BMW, Mercedes or Lexus. The pattern fits.
well the message is there when you get to a low SOC. saying if it gets cold there will be less available power
just feel sorry for some people that don't get it. but hey lots of people around here don't seem to get anything http://lostcoastoutpost.com/ :scared:
KDice, Thanks for posting. I, too, was in the Phoenix area for SB Sunday and rented a car but didn't know I could get a Model S. I would have used it in Phoenix and down to Tucson, but there appears to be a supercharger between the two, so it might have worked well for me. I have not done all the driving you did, so I probably wouldn't have had the range anxiety you did. My Model S comes next month and I don't want to idealize it too much, so it is nice to hear all kinds of opinions about the car. I have a 240v charger installed in my garage (total cost to me just over $500) so I don't think I'll be having problems. And when I go on a road trip this summer in the Model S I'll have to take a different route to get to a supercharger, but that doesn't seem like too bad a thing and too much of an inconvenience to me because it is a vacation. I think I will love my car, but if I am thinking it is perfect I will be disappointed. I appreciated your comments, hope they are sincere, and wish you the best with your car choice.
Yeap.. i just gave up trying and after having over 5-6 other people validate my concerns..what's the point.. I didnt come on here to bash the car, as i rented it to give it a REAL shot... If i can figure out a scenario where the battery would hold up.. Im ALL in.
I've got legit concerns about the battery.. and i've even taken the time to read about how some Owners of the model S, dreadfully ended up with a Bricked battery in the middle of nowhere.. They were rescued, but still.. I consider this to be a legit concern..
and this past week was some of the worst Arizona weather in months.. it rained all day virtually for 3 days straight, Sunday morning it was Fog with visbility in some areas less than 1/2 mile.. the temps did drop down to 40 degrees...
Again no need to lie about paying $299.99 a day to rent a car (I dont even see a need to post a receipt)... I could see if said i paid $1,000.00 a day to rent a Bentley, but come on now.. It's just getting ridiculous..
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Nice.. congrats.. I hope you will post your experience as well..after you feel that you have enough experience for your story you can tell.
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props for checking it out but some terminology that you are using is a little improper/FUD
for one - bricking a battery has never been seen/ witnessed or heard of in a Model S
battery 'failure' has happened to quite a few but this failure is more of a safety issue than car problem. the battery will not let out High voltage without proper checks/safety measures which may be seen as the battery 'failing' but more commonly the 'switch' that allows the HV to flow fails- and it is powered by the 12V so if a power switch controlling the 12V fails this can happen too. good luck with an automatic car and a dead battery, especially if you door locks wont open...same thing but here Tesla will bring you a car and take yours for repairs
I had 2 issues of this sort and wouldn't want to trade my car for anything else (yet)
anyway :biggrin:
sorry you need to defend yourself
awesome you got a chance to check out an S
living with one is amazing - if it works
for one - bricking a battery has never been seen/ witnessed or heard of in a Model S
battery 'failure' has happened to quite a few but this failure is more of a safety issue than car problem. the battery will not let out High voltage without proper checks/safety measures which may be seen as the battery 'failing' but more commonly the 'switch' that allows the HV to flow fails- and it is powered by the 12V so if a power switch controlling the 12V fails this can happen too. good luck with an automatic car and a dead battery, especially if you door locks wont open...same thing but here Tesla will bring you a car and take yours for repairs
I had 2 issues of this sort and wouldn't want to trade my car for anything else (yet)
anyway :biggrin:
sorry you need to defend yourself
awesome you got a chance to check out an S
living with one is amazing - if it works
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breser
AutoPilot Nostradamus
I can understand and appreciate concern about the battery. I had my own concerns before buying.
I'm not aware of anyone with a Model S that has gotten a bricked battery due to the conditions you've shared in this thread that concern you (specifically charging to 100%). There were problems with Roadsters being allowed to discharge the battery too much, but I don't believe anyone has experienced that with the Model S. I have heard of several failures that resulted in people being stranded with a Model S. None of which there is any evidence that user behavior had anything to do with the failure.
- Contactor failures. Contactors are essentially big switches that allow the power to flow out of the high voltage battery. There have been a number of these sorts of failures over the years. There is some anecdotal evidence that older cars with older battery pack revisions have had more of these than newer cars. Though even newer cars have had the failures, just not as much. Tesla has apparently been asking some people with older batteries to come in for proactive maintenance on this.
- 12V battery failures. The car has a traditional lead acid 12V battery. The contactors as mentioned above have to be powered by the 12V battery, if this battery fails then the contactors can't be held closed and the car will lose power. A lot of these failures have not left people stranded but some have. Many people are proactively contacted by Tesla to replace these if they appear to be failing. In general it seems that these should be replaced roughly every year due to the way they are used in the Model S (which doesn't mean the batteries are poor, they are just used differently than in an ICE and this results in faster wear).
- DC-to-DC converter failures. I haven't heard of very many of these failures happening but they do happen. This part converts the high voltage DC power of the big battery into 12V DC that can be used to the charge the previously mentioned 12V battery. If this fails the 12V battery will soon run out of power since it is relatively small.
As people I think we tend to ignore common and well known risks and focus on the more unusual and exotic risks. Especially if the more common and well known risks haven't happened to you personally. That makes it particularly easy to ignore the various failure modes of an ICE vehicle while pointing to a handful of failures in an EV as indicative of a massive problem.
Of the above failures the Contactor (being in the HV battery) is the most expensive to repair. It also happens to be the one that qualifies under the 8 year/unlimited mileage warranty for a 85 kWh vehicle. The other two qualify under the general warranty.
I can't ultimately decide if the risk of failure is tolerable for you or not. But what I can tell you is that if you experience such a failure (and the vast majority of Model S owners have not) you will be well taken care of by Tesla. They really do have the best customer service in their service centers that you can get from any manufacturers.
My own personal research leads me to the conclusion that these are rare occurrences experience by a small minority of the Model S owners. So I'm not overly concerned by the situation.
120V and there are blink chargers in my area, as well as a Supercharger in Buckeye (31 miles away, straight shot off the freeway)
I am not against the Supercharger or even using the 240V Charger at Scottsdale Fashion square which is 10 miles away..
I also just spoke to a Sales Rep at the Tesla Brea Mall.. He said that Tesla even recommends only charging up to 60%-80%, so I keep getting some validation of what my overall knowledge is of this car. He did say you can charge 100%, but again.. they do recommend the latter.
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EarlyAdopter
Active Member
KDIceBergSlim,
A couple of things to consider. If you were going to go for the Model S, given your daily usage, then upgrading your 120V outlet to a 240V outlet would be a must. That's typically around $400 to have an electrician install one. Then, you can use just use the UMC that comes with the car to fully charge up every night. There's no need for a HPWC. Save the money. If you're renting though, you'd need to get your landlord to approve it and that is absolutely a sticking point for many people.
Second, Tesla recommends charging to 90% or less daily to extend the battery life. You are perfectly safe in doing so. And it's not so much the charging past 90% that's damaging to the battery, it's how much time it sits at 100%. Even if you do a full 100% charge each morning as long as you head out shortly after, as many people on here do, it doesn't affect the battery. Different story if you were to charge to 100% and leave it sitting out in the hot sun for a week. Also, even this worse case would result in degradation (reduced capacity), not bricking. Bricking happens when you run the battery down to 0 and leave it for 3+ months.
Third, try this as an experiment now that you're back home - every day for the next week reset the trip odometer in your current car each morning before you head out and see how many miles you drive each day, especially on the weekend. You might be surprised that it's actually a lot less than you would think. I know when we did this we were shocked. Could have sworn we did 200+ miles on busy days on the weekend. Turned out it was more like 80.
A couple of things to consider. If you were going to go for the Model S, given your daily usage, then upgrading your 120V outlet to a 240V outlet would be a must. That's typically around $400 to have an electrician install one. Then, you can use just use the UMC that comes with the car to fully charge up every night. There's no need for a HPWC. Save the money. If you're renting though, you'd need to get your landlord to approve it and that is absolutely a sticking point for many people.
Second, Tesla recommends charging to 90% or less daily to extend the battery life. You are perfectly safe in doing so. And it's not so much the charging past 90% that's damaging to the battery, it's how much time it sits at 100%. Even if you do a full 100% charge each morning as long as you head out shortly after, as many people on here do, it doesn't affect the battery. Different story if you were to charge to 100% and leave it sitting out in the hot sun for a week. Also, even this worse case would result in degradation (reduced capacity), not bricking. Bricking happens when you run the battery down to 0 and leave it for 3+ months.
Third, try this as an experiment now that you're back home - every day for the next week reset the trip odometer in your current car each morning before you head out and see how many miles you drive each day, especially on the weekend. You might be surprised that it's actually a lot less than you would think. I know when we did this we were shocked. Could have sworn we did 200+ miles on busy days on the weekend. Turned out it was more like 80.
Gizmotoy
Active Member
Ah, Tesla's famous inconsistent messaging! I don't doubt that you were told that, but it's not really accurate. The default charge is 90%, and you can reduce from there if you like. Indeed it wasn't even possible to set the charge to a lower level on early vehicles as it was added later via a software update. They recommend charging to 100% when you need it, and not to let it sit at 100% unused. That's pretty much it, other than "A plugged in Tesla is a happy Tesla" (paraphrased from the manual). Tesla doesn't officially recommend anything other than leaving it plugged in at the default normal 90% charge level. You *might* see benefit from charging to a lower SOC, but we've seen no evidence of that so far.
Realistically, for most people, spending more than 3-4 hours in a day (based on a 90% charge) driving the car is an unusual occurrence. For those people, a Tesla is probably suitable for their needs. If you find yourself regularly outside that, it's probably not a good choice.
In your case it's probably best to wait anyway given the financial situation, which has the added benefit of getting you a better car. Just ask those of us built before Autopilot or who wanted AWD.
Waiting has some benefits.
Mario Kadastik
Active Member
Seriously? I drive the car in Estonia, which gets simar weather to Canada. Months of temps in the -10..-25C range are normal in winter and last January was just like that. The range does NOT halve. It may do so if you only drive short stints of 20-30km and then let the car cool down again i.e. wait hours. But if you finish charging, pre-heat the car while still plugged in and go, then getting 330-370km is not an issue. I did 380km in -5C and it involved the car sitting for 2h in the interim 190km spot while I was at a dogshow. Also I didn't go slow, but at speed limit.
Mario Kadastik
Active Member
Forget that 80% mark. Most charge daily to 90% and feel no worries going to 100% if they need the extra range. I know I don't mind and it actually helps as at 100% the car balances the battery. There are tons of people who drive a lot and they don't show considerable degradation and Tesla has had no cases where they refuse a warranty swap.
And here is the proof pic of cold weather range. As you see there was still battery capacity left, I estimated I might have been able to do 400km that day and I didn't hypermile or similar. Just normal driving at speedlimit.
And here is the proof pic of cold weather range. As you see there was still battery capacity left, I estimated I might have been able to do 400km that day and I didn't hypermile or similar. Just normal driving at speedlimit.
You would absolutely want at least the 40A outlet in your garage with the included charging cable. You would then have your full 240+ miles of range each morning.
40 degrees isn't that could and wouldn't be a big hit to range. I would suggest the 85D with 19" rims since range is a great concern of yours. As others have said 'bricking' hasn't happened in the Model S. Some lack failures but rare and any car can break down.
You have to decide if the instant acceleration, driving probably the safest car on the road and the software updates that improve the car over time is right for you. Sounds like it isn't but relying on a 110V outlet and public charging with a 100+ mile weekend day isn't fun and not something I'd want to do either.
GlennAlanBerry
Member
The OP seems to think he knows more about a Tesla Model S than a large group of actual, well-informed, long-term Tesla Model S owners. He refuses to be educated on the many incorrect statements he has made about range, charging, "batteries being bricked", and how the Tesla battery warranty actually works.
My guess is that he is relatively young, probably cannot get financed for a Model S due to his income and lack of credit history, and would have to stretch financially to afford the payments if he was approved for financing. Rather than admit this to himself, he decides to make a bunch of straw man arguments about how the car would not work for him on a Tesla enthusiasts forum, thereby generating 16 pages of comments (so far). I am sure he is enjoying the attention...
My guess is that he is relatively young, probably cannot get financed for a Model S due to his income and lack of credit history, and would have to stretch financially to afford the payments if he was approved for financing. Rather than admit this to himself, he decides to make a bunch of straw man arguments about how the car would not work for him on a Tesla enthusiasts forum, thereby generating 16 pages of comments (so far). I am sure he is enjoying the attention...
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